Napolitano said the bill would fund continued deployment of manpower, air cover and surveillance technologies “along the highest trafficked areas of the Southwest border.”

She testified at a third hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the bipartisan immigration bill that focuses on border security and providing a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented workers.

But the debate over the bill has been overshadowed by the Boston Marathon bombing and the ability of U.S. officials to track the foreign-born suspects who carried out the attack. “We will learn lessons from this attack just as we have from past instances of terrorism and violent extremism. We will apply those. We will emerge even stronger,” Napolitano said.

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